There are more things in heaven and earth

April 15, 2009

This is my first "random" post. I thought about dressing it up with some kind of point, such as "Never judge a book by its cover," or "Why did it take this woman 47 years to find appreciation for her talent?"

But really, it's just a wonderful moment on television. Go watch this uplifting bit on YouTube (and click "more info" for the lyrics).

Ms. Boyle cared for her mother until the elder Boyle's passing in
2007 at the age of 91; her father passed away 10 years before. Living alone,
Susan attends church each weekend and it was there that her singing
talent developed, and where her late mother encouraged her to sing, but
Boyle had reportedly stopped singing and did not know how she would do
on that Saturday night she shocked the World.

Susan's life has not been one without pain.
Sadly, she was abused and starved of oxygen at birth and has a learning
disability because of the act. Ms. Boyle says she was teased by
classmates, and reportedly the scars of their comments remain to this
day.

April 04, 2009

So I'm sitting here with Anya, reading the news while she's looking at her penny collection, and out of the blue she says "Well, I guess the Obama family is more white than McCain, anyway."

I said: "What?"

She continued on to explain that the Bushes are definitely a black family, but in her opinion, Lincoln was "mostly white".

Thankfully my brain kicked into gear and I remembered yesterday's dinner conversation, during which Anya got really mad at Seth for criticizing Lincoln. This led to a discussion about how these things are not black and white, and most things fall into a gray area. And then we got into what "black and white" means, and that the color white is equated with "good" and the color black with "evil". Thus, the Bushes are a black family.

On top of that confusion, Anya doesn't know that "black" people are called black, because when talking about race I only use the actual skin color and geographic origin. American slaves weren't black, they were brown-skinned people from Africa. (The term "black" is itself racist if you think of how this word was used 200 years ago, as in "blackguard," an evil person.)

When Anya was about 3 she once said that a friend of ours was black, and he is African American, but I was shocked that she was using the term. She had never before shown any awareness of race. As it turned out, she wasn't talking about race after all. This friend was "black and brown," while his Irish heritage wife was "orange and white". She was just mentioning his hair.

Recently I've begun talking about race with Anya, but I never use the word "race," I just put it in really simple language. Pale-skinned people took brown- and black-skinned slaves from across an ocean, but a few hundred years before that, other brown-skinned people (Persians) were taking pale-skinned people as slaves. It's an unfortunate human trait that we dehumanize those who look different than us and live differently than we do.

I'm leery of much of what people teach their kids about race because they tend to focus on recent US and British history, in which light-skinned people have constantly victimized darker-skinned people. That's dangerous, no matter how sensitive and left-wing you are, because children will often come to either of these conclusions: 1) light-skinned people are evil, or 2) dark-skinned people are weak. You can get around this problem by taking the broader historical view and explaining that a few hundred years earlier, the light-skinned people in northern Europe were the backwater of the whole planet, constantly being pillaged and enslaved. And around that time or a little earlier, Baghdad was the center of the civilized world, whereas now it is a bombed out hell-hole. In fact, every color of skin and every part of Earth has had its own Empire, at some point in history, and with few exceptions (usually mountain peoples) every part of the planet has at one time been decimated by foreign enemies. The center of power moves. And as it moves, those who have been colonized, pillaged, and then abandoned by a Major Power are doomed to internecine warfare, famine, and plague for centuries afterward. (See Europe, post-Romans; or Africa, post-British/French.)

I actually object to the terms "black" and "white" when they indicate race, although I use the terms like anyone else because it's a losing battle. But I've never used those terms to indicate race when talking to Anya, and I'm annoyed to have to explain them now. I guess I have to, though, to prevent some spectacular misunderstandings!

Woman: Yes, there is a punishment for murder... it is taking of a life.

Interviewer: So why should there not be a punishment for a woman who has an illegal abortion?

Woman: As the other ones say [?], it's kinda between her and God. She will get her punishment in the end.

Interviewer: Then why should it be illegal?

Woman: Because it's the taking of a life....

Another woman says that abortion should be illegal because when it's legal, society is sanctioning it. She too thinks any state punishment for illegal abortion is unnecessary.

It never occurred to me that in the abortion debate we might be disagreeing about the meaning of the words "legal" and "illegal," but so it seems. To most of the people on the above video, legal and illegal are merely synonyms for "approved of / right" and "disapproved of / wrong". If an act is legal, it means it's sanctioned. Ergo, if it's illegal, it is not sanctioned. No actual punishment need be attached to illegality. Legal status is simply the declared opinion of the State, although it may be an entirely toothless declaration.

To most of the country, "illegal" means that society has found this act to be a violation of another's rights or an act harmful to society itself, and has stipulated a range of typical penalties to be imposed. Meanwhile, "legal" is simply the default state for all actions, unless and until we decide that penalties must be imposed as a deterrent against such acts. No penalty? No fines, probation, counseling, or jail time? Then it's not illegal. You can't have it both ways.

If these folks really believe that life begins (instantly, in binary fashion) at the moment of conception, then the penalty for obtaining an abortion should be life in prison. One of those interviewed agrees with this, and she's the only one who is logically consistent. Similarly there are all sorts of anti-choice folks out there who illogically have no problem with in vitro fertilization (in which fertilized eggs are discarded), or with the Pill or IUD's (in which fertilized eggs are miscarried).

Someone should show up to one of these protests with a white board and some dry erase markers and start in with "P implies Q"....

December 09, 2008

They [i.e. the researchers who I will shortly conclude were morons] found that those who performed better on intelligence tests tended to have more - and more mobile - sperm.

The study, which appears in the journal Intelligence, appears to
support the idea that genes underlying intelligence may have other
biological effects too.

...

[P]eople with robust genes might be blessed with a biological "fitness factor" making them fit, healthy and smart.

Well, yes, in a eugenicist's dream there is a simple, binary "fitness factor" which causes certain special humans to be both a) superior and b) more fertile, but here in the real world this is the biggest load of hooey I've come across in a long time.

These researchers need to familiarize themselves with the statistical concept of "confounding." Confounding occurs when some third piece of information -- something that was not included in the analysis -- is in fact responsible for the bogus research finding. For instance, I could go out and do a study of elementary school children and conclude that children with larger feet have superior reading ability. In a K through 5 sample, this would no doubt be true. You could absolutely feed in shoe size and reading score to some software program and find a strong correlation. But of course, if you said "big feet make you a better reader" you'd be a fricking idiot.

Just like these IQ - sperm people, who are also fricking idiots.

There are poisons that reduce both cognitive functioning and male fertility, such as mercury, lead, and GM (genetically modified) soy. There are also mineral deficiencies, such as a lack of zinc, that can cause both. There's trans-fat, which increases the number of abnormal sperm and also blocks the omega-3 fatty acids which are critical to brain functioning. The researchers controlled for alcohol use and smoking, but, in typical fashion, did not consider diet or exposure to common poisons.

Basically, they looked at two indicators of poor health, low sperm count and low cognitive functioning, discovered that (surprise, surprise!) they were modestly correlated, and then made some unjustified conclusion which smells vaguely of eugenics. A great many things affect sperm count. Let's not start pretending that a low sperm count means one is an untermensch.

October 12, 2008

In November, some magazine is going to have Angelina Jolie breastfeeding her baby on its cover. Reuters found a way to create an imaginary controversy over the photo, since the media loves to pretend that breastfeeding is a complicated and fraught political issue, instead of human nature.

But while breast-feeding support groups and moms celebrated Jolie's
public statement, one expert said the picture felt like voyeurism,
especially given Jolie's sex symbol status in movies like "Wanted" and
"Lara Croft: Tomb Raider".

Translation: This would all be fine and everything, except that some people find Ms. Jolie sexy. And we're just not comfortable with sexy women choosing to breastfeed.

Little is seen in the picture of the act of breast-feeding. It shows
Jolie smiling, while a tiny hand is just visible at bottom of the frame.

But [psychotherapist Shannon] Fox said the cover photo sends a second message.

"The problem is that she is also an international sex symbol. So
whether or not she says 'This is a beautiful way of nurturing my baby',
every man who sees that photo will see those breasts as sexual."

Why... yes, Dr. Fox, that's right! Men see boobs and think "sexy," and babies see boobs and think "food". And your point is???

I guess these little-minded people are still trying to pigeonhole every woman according to the ancient virgin/whore dichotomy. In their world, you can either be the Virgin Mary nursing your babe in the manger, or you can be a sexual Mary Magdalene... but not both.

A huge thanks and congratulations to Angelina Jolie, for turning that stupid dichotomy on its head.